Where we live

Residents find Kenmore Park ‘a little gem’

North Linden neighborhood has pride of ownership, not to mention ‘Fab Fridays’

These are the places we call home -- the places where we raise our families, cook our meals and spend our lives. Not only have these places play a role in our individual histories, but they have also played a role in Columbus history. The Dispatch visits some of these communities and shares their stories.

Megan Buscemi wanted to live in a cottage. She and her husband, Tony, were happy in their
three-story house in Columbus’ Victorian Village, but she went online to search for the house of
her dreams.

She found what she was looking for in North Linden, in a neighborhood near Cleveland Avenue and
Weber Road called Kenmore Park.

Her husband was wary at first — more than wary.

“I said no,” Mr. Buscemi recalled.

But they went to the neighborhood and liked what they saw — not only the house, which is just
north of Weber, but also the nearby parks. They discovered that Kenmore is a close-knit community
that holds “Fab Friday” parties in the summer and a progressive dinner party during the year.

It’s in a part of town that suburbanites might view as dangerous, based on crime news, but that
Mr. Buscemi calls “a little nirvana.”

The heart of Kenmore Park was a planned community, platted in the mid-1920s by the Willard Co.,
a Columbus developer that had offices Downtown in the Hartman Building.

The L-shaped plan features two circular parks, creating street roundabouts in the heart of the
neighborhood. Prewar homes — some stone, others brick, some frame, some Tudor-style — line the
streets.

Real-estate agent Jamie Pearson is listing a house in the neighborhood. He’s based in Dublin and
knew nothing of Kenmore Park. He said many people perceive of Columbus as having old homes that
need a lot of work. Instead, he found Kenmore Park, in his words, “quite enchanting.”

“My first time through the area, I almost felt like I was watching an episode of
The Brady Bunch,” he said. “I felt like I entered this place that was well-taken-care-of —
beautiful homes.”

Brian Thomas thinks enough of the neighborhood he calls home that he moved his mom into a house
behind his in 2004.

Thomas, 50, a musician and woodwinds teacher, grew up on the East Side and went to Walnut Ridge
High School. He has lived in Columbus most of his life and moved into his restored,
1,800-square-foot Kenmore Park Tudor revival in 1997. He bought the house for $89,500. Today, the
Franklin County auditor’s office values it at $157,700, about $28,000 more than the rate of
inflation.

When Thomas bought the house, the area was teetering “on the verge of going bad,” he said.
Today, young families are moving in, along with gay couples, said Thomas, who lives with his
partner, Tim Nakamura.

The Buscemis moved into their 1935-era cottage last May. Mr. Buscemi, who is 46 and a lawyer,
said the house had a new roof, windows and siding. Other homes in the neighborhood are similarly
kept up, although some others are showing their age.

The neighborhood has a Facebook page where residents keep each other abreast of goings-on. It
also has a priest, the Rev. Patrick Patterson, who works with the large Latino community at the
nearby St. James the Less Catholic Church on Oakland Park Avenue.

Kenmore Park itself doesn’t have a large Latino population, but the church draws from the
surrounding area, said Patterson, who has lived in a brick bungalow in the neighborhood since 2007.
More than half the parish members and school students are Latino, he said.

When St. James the Less was built in 1947, it served the area’s large Italian and Irish
populations, Patterson said.

Madeleine Trichel, whose husband, Richard Korn, is a member of the North Linden Area Commission,
has lived in her Kenmore Park house for more than 40 years.

“When we moved here, it was an Italian neighborhood. All our neighbors were Italian,” Trichel,
72, said. “We still have grapevines in our backyard.”

A title abstract from 1926 shows that Kenmore Park was restricted to whites when it was laid
out. It’s now more diverse, with blacks among the residents.

Trichel moved to the neighborhood with her former husband, an Ohio State University professor
who knew another professor in the neighborhood and wanted to be close to the university; Kenmore
Park is a 10-minute drive from campus.

The area isn’t perfect. “It gets pretty rough not too far away,” Mr. Buscemi said. Trichel said
there are break-ins, but Kenmore Park has an active block watch.

The neighborhood is soon to get an upgrade of its Kenlawn Park, and Columbus parks officials are
meeting with residents to determine what improvements they prefer. The city has set aside $125,000
for the work, which is to begin this fall, said Terri Leist, assistant recreation and parks
director.

It will be a burnished park in the middle of a neighborhood Mr. Buscemi calls “a little
gem."